The prior art includes two different categories of systems. These include systems such as electronic books which receive substantially static content (e.g., books, music, movies, newspapers and magazines) from a specialized server via a serial link, line-of-sight link, or telephone line and systems (such as car radios) which receive small size information (e.g. travel information) via a broadcast channel. Such systems are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,761,485 to Munyan and U.S. Pat. No. 5,339,091 to Yamazaki et al., the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. The size of these messages, however, is limited due to bandwidth constraints.
In Europe, the normal radio signal provides additional digital traffic messages (TMC), which are received and stored in a car radio for later retrieval. The Philips™ car radio <<CARIN 520>>™, for example, has a voice synthesizer that reads relevant traffic information to the driver of a car. Such a TMC-enabled radio comprises a decoder which decodes the received TMC messages.
Current electronic books (<<e-books>>) such as the <<ROCKET EBOOK>>, the <<SOFTBOOK ELECTRONIC TABLET>>, OR THE <<EVERYBOOK ELECTRONIC BOOK>> constrain the user by requiring the use of either a modem and a phone line to connect directly or over the Internet to a special server or the use of a serial connection (cable-based or infrared) to a host PC running a special <<librarian>> program for downloading media to the e-book.
Therefore, what is needed is a system and method that updates a device with static media and which does not rely on direct or line-of-sight connection for updating purposes, but which can be updated by other means not requiring a constrained locational relationship between the receiving unit and the transmitting unit.